(www.meowbarkblog.com) — I got a frantic call from my husband today while I was pulling into the chiropractor’s parking lot about 35 minutes from our house. (I need adjustments 3x/week for the next 4 weeks thanks to my recent car accident.)

“The alarm is going off at the house!”

“Well, I’m at the doctor and I won’t be home for over half an hour if leave now, so…”

“Okay, I’ll tell them to send the police.”

Dave,* who’s been living with us for a few months while waiting for his wife to get a transfer from her job 3 hours from HIS new job, beat me home and called Jesse with the news: “The dogs ate that big box of chocolate. I think it set off the alarm when they were scraping the plastic across the floor.”

Oh, great. My dogs, who just a few days earlier, downed 10 lbs of flour, just ate 2.5 lbs of chocolate. Does it get any better?

Fortunately for all of us, it wasn’t very good-quality chocolate, so the amount of cocoa consumed even if one dog had eaten the whole thing alone would have been minimal. So far, everyone seems just fine. Even Pickles, who we learned from the projectile vomiting post-flour, tends to have a more sensitive stomach than the other dogs. Awesome. What else can they POSSIBLY get into?

Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King

• Not his real name.

(image: SXC.hu)

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — If there’s one thing Ty loves, it’s stuffed animals. And he’s going to get them, no matter what it takes! See what I mean?

We call him Mr. Barky Buns Big Head. I’m sure you can figure out why.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — After putting it off for more than a year, I finally read the last three chapters of Marley & Me, in anticipation of the film release later this month. I don’t mean to be giving any spoilers here, but the dog dies at the end, as dogs are wont to do. And it’s not a particularly horrible death except for the horribleness that is death.

I bawled. I’m still sniffling, tears sneaking out despite my best efforts to remember that (a) it’s not MY dog and (b) it happened years ago and (c) he had a good long life for a dog anyway, with people who clearly loved him, so it’s not that sad. Those things mean NOTHING. Marley’s death is possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of sad stuff.

I think what did it for me was thinking about Murphy and what a bad dog he is even though he tries to be good. Murphy is Marley in mastiff form. And as much as he drives us crazy with his insane behavior and his eating everything that’s not nailed down (and some things that are, come to think of it: case in point, the patio steps), when he goes it will be gut-wrenching.

What is it about bad dogs that make them the most lovable?

We had been reading Marley & Me together, my husband and I, because we had both wanted to read it and he didn’t want me to do it without him. So every night before bed, I’d read a chapter aloud. But toward the end there, I was crying too hard to speak and I could barely see the words on the page. That’s why we ultimately set it aside.

“You should finish Marley,” my husband told me tonight as after he answered my cries to rescue Pickles from the soaking tub in the master bath. (She had chased a cat in and gotten stuck). I was lying in bed, sick, and it seemed like a good idea. But it was NOT a good idea. Bawling and heaving big shuddering sobs while you already feel like your sinuses are about to explode is not something I recommend.

But now that I’m mostly calmed down, I feel a kind of lightness that I needed to feel. Maybe just the physical act of crying did it, but I think it probably had something more to do with knowing that I’m not alone in loving a terrible dog who no one else could ever love, a good dog trapped in a bad dog’s body.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

Well, if this isn’t irony, I don’t know what is. I came home from being gone maybe an hour, and found the house in utter disarray.

Now, before I get into the details, it’s important to point out that with as well as things have been going since Bark Busters came, we’ve started leaving the dogs loose in the house when we’re gone for short periods of time. Aside from a few garbage can incidents, it’s been mostly successful. Until yesterday.

Something felt a little…off when I walked in. Then, I saw the new phone book. Or, rather, what was left of the new phone book. We’d dropped it on the coffee table and forgotten about it, but the dogs didn’t! Parts of the alphabet were strewn all over the house, with a big shredded pile still attached to the binding. Bye-bye, phone book!

It wasn’t until I began picking up G-J that I realized that something else was in the pile. I started finding broken glass and wood splinters. And then I discovered our “family photo” amid the debris: me, Jesse, and the three dogs.

They stole a wrapped present out of a bag in the dining room, unwrapped it, and procecded to utterly destroy a framed photo of themselves. Except, the picture was unharmed, just a little slobbery. Awesome.

Even more awesome was that as I swept up the mess, I started finding huge splotches of blood all over the floor. A careful examination of everyone’s paws failed to reveal who the bleeder was. It wasn’t until I separated everyone during the cleaning efforts that I finally discovered who it was: Pickles, as evidenced by the blood spots all over the white carpet in my office, where she was confined. Did I mention that it was awesome? She is fine, by the way.

In Murphy’s defense, I don’t think he worked alone. But now that we’ve stopped calling him “the life ruiner,” we’re back to referring to him as “Destructor.”

And here are a few other things they’ve destroyed recently. My favorite was the feather pillow. It looked like a duck exploded, and the best part was the feather stuck all over Murphy’s face.